ACTION BOOKS SUBSCRIPTIONS

CARRION FLOWERS SUITE

In a world of dismaying and oppressive absolutes, James Pate traces the political urgency of the Gothic in Flowers Among the Carrion: “There is nothing escapist about dreams: instead, they are a currency in our waking world, with their own explosive economies.” Our Carrion Flowers sale offers three explosively dreaming titles. Valerie Hsuing’s efg is radiantly centrifugal, an acute and total pushback against the forces of “naturacide” and extinguishment. French Moroccan writer Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia (trans. Aditi Machado) trains its illicitly sensuous attention on multiple illicit bodies: the corpse of a brother who has died of AIDS, the immigrant’s body, the Muslim body, the queer body. Together, efg and Prosopopoeia form a virtual system where would-be opposites overlap and coincide: ecstatic and dismayed, ornate and buoyant, grief-stricken and turned-on. Such impossible states are well-described in the essays of Pate’s book.

In the interest of sharing these three important works as widely as possible, this sale includes all three books — a $42 value — for $25.